Some IT pros can cringe when anyone talks about an MSP, or managed services provider. As I see it, there can be both good and bad reasons for this. Skeptics see MSPs as Shadow IT, someone who comes in behind your back (or even to your face) and gradually erodes your ability and reputation within a company. Now, I’m not saying that doesn’t happen, but that’s only one side of the coin. As in other aspects of IT, there are good and bad sticks of RAM.

I’ve had experiences along the full spectrum of MSP support. At the credit union where I worked previously it was all in-house IT. My first professional IT job was a mix of in-house and outsource. My current job is “full” outsource. I’ve experienced both the good and bad from all sides of the perspective.

These are a few lessons learned based off those experiences that will hopefully give in-house MSP naysayers some things to consider and MSP IT pros some insight from the other side of the fence.

Don’t let one bad apple spoil the bunch for you. There are companies out there that do all the right things for the company and the resident IT expert. But there are also some MSPs that can make it a huge pain to get basic tasks done or even undermine your authority or reputation. That’s why it’s important for in-house techs to do their homework.

Make sure to properly vet the MSP you’re currently with or are considering. Visit them at their place, have them come to yours, find out if they hold events, contact references, and have them talk to your staff. One good way to see how they’ll work for you is to get them involved in a project. Pick an upcoming project that isn’t too large — or too small — that they can jump on board with and help you out with without a lot of lead or research time.

There’s no better way to see how they do business than to get them to do something for you. This is all about seeing them in action. How’s the process for getting the task started? How do their techs handle communication and follow-through? How do they wrap up the project? These are all things you won’t fully understand until actually working with them.

Read that legal mumbo-jumbo. It should go without saying to read the contract. If you’re considering a company and they don’t bust out the boring legal paper, I’d run away. Don’t consider work from someone who doesn’t run their business properly and lay out the details of the work / support you’re buying from them.

Now that you’re talking to a real business, read over the contract. No, I don’t mean read it over like you read all the EULAs of software you’ve installed. Read and fully understand every word on that piece of paper. If you don’t understand it, get some legal council.

That contract is the agreement between you and the MSP on what work is being provided and what isn’t covered. It protects both you and the MSP. Fully discuss in 1337 speak, Klingon, Binary or whatever language you choose how things will work — discuss all the details so everyone is on the same page. The contract is not final until the signatures are added, so have a full discussion with your MSP and let them know your concerns or opinions on the topics of the contract. It’s better to have the discussion now and ensure the expectations are clear for both sides before you’re in over your head and discover the support you thought you had isn’t there without extra cost.

Relationships are a two-player game. How many have considered that maybe some of the bad rap some MSPs get is unfounded? We all have to keep in mind that working with an MSP is a professional relationship. One of the key foundations of any relationship is communication. You need to make sure you stay in contact with your reps at the MSP. It’s important for them to know the changing environment, expectations, and realities of your network and your company. You wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of the boss’ wrath because you called him directly rather than through his secretary when you weren’t told, so why put your MSP through that?

Does your CEO have a preference for contact? Does the CEO even want to deal with the MSP? Does your CFO absolutely need to see and approve every change request? These are things that your MSP will need to know! A good MSP will know that it’s important for them to keep you in the loop on how things are running with what they control, so why not return the favor? It’s easy for communication to break down in a relationship, so it’s important for you to put the effort in to ensure that doesn’t happen. If either side doesn’t put the effort in, everything can start to fall apart.

All MSPs aren’t created equal. Some MSPs start with the best of intentions but their direction changes until it just no longer fits with your company’s direction. Some are rock stars that can hit both the melody and solo sections with ease. If you’re at the point where you’re looking for that additional help from an MSP, make sure to properly vet your new partner and ease them into how your company operates with introductory meetings and small projects. If you have an MSP now, make sure to keep the communication lines open and make sure they are in-line with your company’s needs and direction.﻿

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Got pointers for picking the right MSP? Or, if you're an MSP, have tips for making sure in-house IT doesn't view you as the enemy? Share you suggestions and stories in the comments below!

75 Replies

In my current job and in my previous job I was hired by an organization with the hope of slowly removing the MSP from the company. In both cases that MSPs had lost the meaning of customer service and the company that hired me were frustrated with the MSP and wanted me to help get rid of the MSP. I feel like I should include a certification on my resume that reads certified MSP remover. I used to work for an MSP in a previous job so I feel like I've experienced both sides of the coin. The problem with MSPs in a general sense is that they aren't designed to be flexible with their contracts. Once the contract is signed there ain't no good way to change the relationship because the sales person who set up the contract has moved on and you are stuck with the tech support types. If a company hires an experienced tech worker that can do some or all of the work that the MSP is/was doing they tend to resist this person's efforts. My suggestion is to get find an MSP that is willing to do T & M work and to get the company that hires them to agree to this arrangement. If there is experienced IT staff in the company that may need an MSP to back them up and assist them and they are willing then this is the best arrangement. If a company doesn't want their own IT staff then they should hire the MSP knowing that the MSP is their one and only IT resource.

I do agree about the contact part. At the bank I'm working it now, it's been difficult to get our MSP to do what we need. Regardless of the contract, a good partner should be mindful of the clients needs and find ways to adapt the strategy or bring up "hey, things have changed lately, maybe we should review the contract to see if there are adjustments we can make to better serve you". Any company that does that and puts that type of customer service in are the ones to keep in contact with.

I'm right there on the same page being a survivor of working for one of the lesser MSPs. the MSP that I worked for would flat out tell their customers to fire their IT staff once we had all the passwords. Once we had their contract and got their IT staff out of the way, our sales staff would come back with engineers to consult and inform them that their IT staff was doing everything wrong and to fix it you have to buy, buy, buy. Oh, also the stuff you have to buy doesn't have any labor in your contract. Since you don't currently have an in house IT staff, we'll send an engineer for $250 an hour on top of the per device management fee we're already charging you. If you don't like that, we defer you to your copy of your signed contract, we put it in the fine print that in order to exit the contract early, you have to pay for an entire year of service plus an exit penalty.

I now work within an organization with its own IT staff and a fair labor budget. I don't think I could go back to working for another MSP after the experience I had at the above un-named MSP.

Wow, that is some harsh business practices CGlennPCSO. It's a good thing you got out of there, I would imagine that was hard on the conscious ﻿to work for a company that would do such underhanded tactics. That is the epitome of bad MSPs and giving them as a whole a bad name.

As one who is looking for an MSP, it would be nice if you you could say the company names. I think the companies I'm talking to will help us. As we vet them I' now have the contracts to review. If you're willing to share positive or negative info, having the company names would help.Thanks

For those who complain about the cost of projects work. It may help you guys to think msp as a managed support partner, rather than service partner. As in when you open a ticket you will usually get to the tier 1/2 techs out of a pool of techs, there focus is not one client as a whole but quiet possibly a subset, or an area of expertise, they will also occasionally have minor project work. You will get passed onto tier 3/project techs depending on the issue and if it is past the pool of knowledge they know, depending on the size if the company it may very well get escalated to the one who designed the solution you now have.

The project techs which cost the big bucks are very likely to be specialists in the area and a such command a higher salary.
When these techs come to site, you are paying for there undivided time and attention and usually for their knowledge in setting up a system. Which is something i am sure your agreement would not cover. I knew a couple of clients who had a tech routinely come to site to talk to heads of departments to see what niggles there were and how we could fix them.

As an msp in a couple of previous roles, the amount of time spent and montitering that was invested in the clients systems was on a scale that goes on only with larger companies.

It is usually the cost of new installations and projects which gets most people but when weighed against the cost of having in house IT departments with eviquilent experience/knowledge full time you are usually saving on wages atleast once all is said and done. If one year its higher than if you had an it department this would usually be due to the cost of a project, but that projects expendature should really be looked wt over the lifetime of the system.
If the msp is good and reputable they will usually have better equipment pricing than you would otherwise have.
The hardest time most msp's have is managing expectations as in the in house it world, every users issue is the most important thing to them, this is compounded to every companies issue is the most important. When the POC is contacting the msp they are a lot lise likely to be unaware of any other issues that the msp may be dealibg with. Some of these may well be issues with the companys network the POC knows nothing about.

An msp is not a good fit for every company but every map i have worked for has found managing expectations the hardest part of the job.

I've seen some local MSP's putting out help wanted ads. They seem to be big on professionalism, not so much on pay. Must be doing pretty well though, really expanding, because they're always hiring more techs.

I'm right there on the same page being a survivor of working for one of the lesser MSPs. the MSP that I worked for would flat out tell their customers to fire their IT staff once we had all the passwords. Once we had their contract and got their IT staff out of the way, our sales staff would come back with engineers to consult and inform them that their IT staff was doing everything wrong and to fix it you have to buy, buy, buy. Oh, also the stuff you have to buy doesn't have any labor in your contract. Since you don't currently have an in house IT staff, we'll send an engineer for $250 an hour on top of the per device management fee we're already charging you. If you don't like that, we defer you to your copy of your signed contract, we put it in the fine print that in order to exit the contract early, you have to pay for an entire year of service plus an exit penalty.

I now work within an organization with its own IT staff and a fair labor budget. I don't think I could go back to working for another MSP after the experience I had at the above un-named MSP.

I couldn't agree more. For the last 5 years I was in an almost identical situation. As soon as the contract was signed, service levels flat lined. Now I am with a local municipality that covers 99% in-house. I think I would choose to leave the industry before going back to another service provider.

The thing a lot of companies don't realize is... when you hire an MSP... you're getting (majority of the time) bottom of the barrel tech's... either very new / young inexperienced guys. Or... just very under paid guys who just could careless.

And you get what you pay for.. That holds true.. Always. You want to cut corners and get a team of techs for the price of one or whatever they are pitching... Don't expect top grade support.. They are managing a dozen other companies IT departments lol.

As someone who has dealt with MSPs for a large part of my career (almost completely involved, now that I think of it), I dread MSPs. Don't get me wrong, I love the guys and gals who work FOR the MSPs, they're hard workers (for the most part) just like the rest of us. But the games that come with MSPs is just incredibly frustrating at times. SLA arguing or outright fraud. Contractual debates on to what is and what is not covered. Sometimes the quality of tech they hire in contrast to the money you're handing them for that tech. The constant turn around the MSP has because they pay low so my division is always having problems with support. I've had very poor experiences with MSPs. And the smaller the MSP, the more I'm tempted to not hire them at this point, which is awful, but the amount of BS I've had to deal with in my career, the 'savings' my division or company received was probably negated by loss of services, increased administration time and just not worth the frustration.

Now, that said, I know there are SOME good, quality MSPs out there that go to work every day trying to give the customer their moneys worth while trying to keep their budgets reasonable. Problem being? It's like trying to hire someone for a Tier 1 Help Desk. For every 1 awesome tech, you gotta weed out 40 not so muchs.

As a MSP, I know that we've been painted with that same broad brush. Our approach has always been for the long term ﻿relationship﻿ and not the soak them for everything they've got approach. I can't put enough emphasis on checking their references. If they aren't willing to share references (and not just 1) that you can talk to where they've done similar work to what you're asking for...carefully consider what you may be getting into. Read over that contract!!! It isn't unreasonable to have an early cancellation fee but there should be provisions in the contract for dispute remediation and how to effectively measure SLA. If the MSP isn't delivering their SLA then the contract should allow for an out clause. The contract should be written in such a way as to clearly state the work being performed and at what cost. Informed consent requires clear information. If you aren't sure...ask questions...lots of questions. Contracts can also be amended or changed to more accurately reflect the partnership/work so be sure to get legal advise if necessary.

There are bad apples...in every business. But if you do your homework, it's likely that your partnership with a MSP will be beneficial. Often times MSPs are brought in because the resident IT staff does not have the experience or the time for the work but whatever the case may be, be sure to ask for samples of the type of documentation you should expect at the completion of the project.

- "Dedicated Support Staff". This is an additional tech, hired strictly to support one division, outside of the on-site support staff. Cost? $115,000 / yr. What did we get? A sub-contracted tech making $14/hr. with the bare minimum certs / experience for the contract. Oh! And when THAT tech quit, they'd take a tech from the on-site staff and plug him in, shorting their own staff, but using the "We have X days to hire a new on-site staff" as a buffer.

- "Stop the clock!" MSP techs would call for their tickets knowing the staff had already left for the day or were at lunch, or a meeting, etc etc. so they could stop the clock on the ticket but not have to go to fix it. And when the users called back, they would already be out in the field and an "Appointment to have them call us back" would be made.

- "The Loaner". My contracting officer missed this one (the wording was a little too vague and allowed for what happened) and it drove us nuts. Civil engineers with AutoCad and various other high end programs. Computer would go down. Say, bad hard drive or Windows died. They would be issued a "Loaner" that had none of their software titles but did have the basic stuff. Office, Windows, the time keeping 'software' (it was a web portal)... and because they were deployed a 'loaner', the SLA clock stopped and it'd take 5 days to get the damn computer back. So I had users playing nomads.

- "The Password Sheet". This allowed me to get an MSP fired and then hauled into court. Administrator, domain admin and various other passwords printed on a sheet and then found thrown out in the trash. Plain text. No regard for my network security.

Those are the four most aggravating things I can recall. There were others, smaller constant issues, but these were damn near infuriating.

I see both takes on MSPs, good and bad, simply because I worked for the biggest MSP in our area for over five years up until last year, and now here I am about to potentially take over the IT management role for a company that actually had the MSP I worked for come out and provide a quote while I was still there.

The MSP I worked for grew significantly during the time I was there and we had some long time clients and after serving time as both help desk and service coordinator, we really did push to get all of our clients taken care of on time and get the problems truly resolved. Most of the time, issues were from communication issues with the client, incorrectly placed blame from the client (such as 'why didn't you make my internet come back faster' when the ISP was down or 'how did I lose my information' after numerous attempts to sell them a backup solution, etc.), and unrealistic expectations on issues that simply need more time. There were clients that having us (the MSP) simply didn't work for the client or MSP and it just wasn't meant to be, we had some companies simply too small that expected immediate break/fix resolutions as if they had called out a plumber to fix a clogged toilet or something, which just isn't always possible in IT. We had our fair share of growing pains and adjustments to make along the way, but it was a pretty consistent deal while I was there.

That being said, I could not see us using a MSP where I work now. Not just because I am well aware of how they work and it'd play to my strengths after working for one, but basically the expectations on turn-around time would be hard to fulfill by the MSP and the place I work for and the components we have in place that are vital to the company wouldn't make much sense to have an MSP try to maintain, you'd be having multiple parties (3+﻿) trying to resolve issues in some cases when it comes to our sales and database software, and you're just setting yourself up for miscommunication, phone tag marathons, and antsy management as they wait for everyone to get their part of the issue done.

Bottom line, MSPs are great in some cases and the relationship between a company and an MSP, even with an on-site IT person or two, can flourish. Though, there are some cases it just does not work and it should be kept in-house with the support. Not to say there couldn't be some benefits there to be had, but you'd be setting yourself up for (likely) failure.

The thing a lot of companies don't realize is... when you hire an MSP... you're getting (majority of the time) bottom of the barrel tech's... either very new / young inexperienced guys. Or... just very under paid guys who just could careless.

And you get what you pay for.. That holds true.. Always. You want to cut corners and get a team of techs for the price of one or whatever they are pitching... Don't expect top grade support.. They are managing a dozen other companies IT departments lol.

I won't speak for all MSPs, because I know there are some that aren't low lifes, however.. a perfect example of your point.

Our billable rate paid out was $45/hr to the company. By the time the tech got an offer, that was down to somewhere between $13-16/hr. And if you wonder what type of tech you get for $13/hr that has to have at least 3 certifications and 1 year experience? Heh. It ain't pretty.

Exactly. They pay for guys to get certs quickly and they never retain anything they learn. That's why I've always said don't always believe just because one has a cert or a degree for that matter that they are sharp or still sharp in some instances.

I had a guy working with me one time who was self taught and had no papers proving his skill other than a resume with some great references which were called and vetted. He turned out to be one of our greatest assets.

My caution to ppl looking to outsource is this : buyer beware. Do your homework. And you get what you pay for. If it was easy everyone would be doing it.